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Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler

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In 1941, philosopher and poet Gendun Chopel (1903–51) sent a large manuscript by ship, train, and yak across mountains and deserts to his homeland in the northeastern corner of Tibet. He would follow it five years later, returning to his native land after twelve years in India and Sri Lanka. But he did not receive the welcome he imagined: he was arrested by the government of the regent of the young Dalai Lama on trumped-up charges of treason. He emerged from prison three years later a broken man and died soon after.

Gendun Chopel was a prolific writer during his short life. Yet he considered that manuscript, which he titled Grains of Gold, to be his life’s work, one to delight his compatriots with tales of an ancient Indian and Tibetan past, while alerting them to the wonders and dangers of the strikingly modern land abutting Tibet’s southern border, the British colony of India. Now available for the first time in English, Grains of Gold is a unique compendium of South Asian and Tibetan culture that combines travelogue, drawings, history, and ethnography. Gendun Chopel describes the world he discovered in South Asia, from the ruins of the sacred sites of Buddhism to the Sanskrit classics he learned to read in the original. He is also sharply, often humorously critical of the Tibetan love of the fantastic, bursting one myth after another and finding fault with the accounts of earlier Tibetan pilgrims. Exploring a wide range of cultures and religions central to the history of the region, Gendun Chopel is eager to describe all the new knowledge he gathered in his travels to his Buddhist audience in Tibet.

At once the account of the experiences of a tragic figure in Tibetan history and the work of an extraordinary scholar, Grains of Gold is an accessible, compelling work animated by a sense of discovery of both a distant past and a strange present. (Source: University of Chicago Press)

Citation	Chöpel, Gendun. Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler. Translated by Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez Jr. Buddhism and Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

ContentsAbout the BookSources

• Introduction
  • 1 First, How I Set Out from Lhasa
  • 2 General Formation of the Land of India and How It Acquired Its Name
  • 3 How the Lands Were Given Their Names
  • 4 The Snow Mountains of the North and Analysis of Related Issues
  • 5 What the Famous Places of the Past Are Like
  • 6 On Men, Women, Food, Drink, and Various Apparel
  • 7 Identification of Various Species of Flowers and Trees and How to Recognize Them
  • 8 Writing Systems of Various Regions of Past and Present
  • 9 On the Linguistic Rules of the Tibetan Language
  • 10 The Inscriptions of the Dharma King Aśoka Carved on the Rock Face of Mount Girnar
  • 11 The Gupta Dynasty
  • 12 The Pāla Dynasty
  • 13 From 1,600 Years after the Passing of the Buddha to the Present
  • 14 On the History of Siṅghala
  • 15 On the Conditions and the Customs of the Tibetan People in Ancient Times
  • 16 The Religion of the Tīrthikas
  • 17 Conclusion

• • Appendix A: Tibetan Transliteration
  • Appendix B: Glossary of Terms
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index

Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez, Jr deliver Gendun Chopel's life's work--the account of his pilgrimage through South Asia that combines travelogue, drawings, history, and ethnography--in English. Scholars and practitioners alike will embrace these tales of ancient India, recent Indian past, and early Tibetan history told from Chopel's sharp, critical humor that comes alive through Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez's rendering. An appendix including Tibetan transliterations used in the work, notes, and an index are included.

1. Chöpel, Gendün, A mdo dge 'dun chos 'phel, དགེ་འདུན་ཆོས་འཕེལ . rgyal khams rig pas bskor ba’i gtam rgyud gser gyi thang ma. In gsung 'bum dge 'dun chos 'phel, Vol. 1: 1-426. Lhasa: bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990.